


hands we've never seen

by stellatiate



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canon Compliant, Gen, Han Jumin has Feelings™, Introspection, Jumin Route Spoilers, One-Sided Relationship, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 22:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8685493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: Beside him, a thick book is cracked open to the center with a pressed flower laminated in its pages. -—jumin; rika & v.





	

“You actually came here.”

Han Jumin doesn’t take sick days from school and yet this is how Jihyun finds him—shrunken into the furthest corner of his bed with the sheets wrapped around his hips. His face feels clammy and feverish and Jumin presses the backs of his hands against his cheeks before he swipes his hair out of his eyes to look over at his friend.

Jihyun is the only friend of his that his mother recognizes (and the only friend of his _period_ ) so Jumin is well aware that he takes advantage of the fact to constantly visit him at home. Usually, the two of them walk to his house after school, but only one of them wears the school uniform today.

The sight of it pulls nausea from the base of Jumin’s stomach.

“I heard you were sick,” Jihyun says. His voice is meek, the tone always delicate no matter the occasion. It soothes him like a cool cloth, drawing the fever from his mouth in small breaths. In their few years of blossoming friendship, Jumin has yet to see Jihyun raise his voice for any reason.

Jumin watches his friend take the mahogany chair from his work desk and drag it to the side of his bed before sitting there. “It’s true that I’m not feeling well,” he says as he scoots down the length of his bed to approach his friend, “I’m almost certain I caught some sort of viral infection from that _unsightly_ new girl in our class.”

Jihyun snickers politely behind his palm, clear eyes watching him carefully. Jumin remembers their instructor presenting her in front of the classroom as a new exchange student, how the girl had curtsied in front of the other students and sat in the open seat next to him. Her face was sharp and soft, a rose with all the thorns worried into his skin. Her smile whenever she could catch his eye made his stomach hurt.

It was the first day he’d shown any symptoms.

“Ha-nui?” His friend supplies and the name slaps heat into Jumin’s neck, steadily climbing up to the tips of his ears.

He fists his hands in the sheets and pulls them up to his chin, glaring down into the silks. “Yes,” he grits, “ever since she started sitting next to me, I’ve been feeling atrocious.”

Something in Jihyun’s eyes glitters but he doesn’t speak. Jumin watches from lidded eyes as he repositions himself more comfortably in the chair, flipping it and straddling the seat with his arms across the back. His eyes are still mischievously alit and Jumin doesn’t like it.

“Ha-nui,” he repeats the name and Jumin scowls at the sound, “is making you sick. Did you ever try talking to her?”

Jumin grimaces. “I can’t. Looking at her makes my head ache.”

Jihyun is laughing softly into his forearms now, watching his friend with a pitiful humor locked in his eyes. And the heir remains quiet but pouty, waiting for the mirth to subside before he even dares to approach his friend with a question. His mouth is parted on indignant questioning when Jihyun interrupts his thoughts.

“I think you _like_ Ha-nui. Jumin, I think you have a crush on her.”

Jumin’s jaw unhinges and drops immediately, before he fires back. “How could you—are you even—do you _know_ how sick I am, Jihyun?” He grasps the sheets with a pale hand and rips them away from his body. “I can’t even focus on my schoolwork. My head hurts and my stomach feels like it’s on _fire_ and this girl gives me a fever, don’t mock me!”

“She gives you a fever just fine,” Jihyun mumbles with a grin and Jumin’s face contorts with a noiseless anger before he turns and throws his face into his pillows dramatically. He counts how many times he breathes in the fresh scented fabric, hoping that the floral fumes will slowly put him out of his misery.

He can’t _believe_ what Jihyun is suggesting, what he is implying. Han Jumin is nothing like his father, whose eyes are unfaithful and his heart is a finicky, whimsical thing. There has never been anything practical about feeling anything towards anyone, especially towards girls. He’s barely fifteen, after all.

And yet, it makes more sense when he considers it. Jihyun is his best friend and he knows Jumin better than he knows himself; he’s always careful to remember this.

Ha-nui doesn’t seem to be ill herself. Her features are soft with the last bits of baby fat but beneath them are honed cheekbones and a full smile that turns her eyes into gems. Her hair is all springs and curls pushed behind her ears and when she smiles at Jumin, his stomach doesn’t hurt, per se.

God. “A crush,” Jumin huffs into the pillow, words suffocating into the fabric, “how useless is _that_.”

…

_I always sit on the wooden shelf and stare at the same scenery. I've always stayed still, not moving a single finger. I don't know how long it's been. I stayed still, glancing at people occasionally passing by and looking for something to catch their eyes on the shelf._

…

Han Jumin doesn’t take sick days from work and yet this is where Jihyun finds him—sitting on a bench in his private garden, marveling over the growth of his azaleas. Beside him, a thick book is cracked open to the center with a pressed flower laminated in its pages. A wine bottle rests in the grass at his feet, the cork pushed back into it.

“How poetic, Jumin,” his friend says, closing the book around the floral bookmark and sitting down, “drinking wine in your private garden.”

He doesn’t know what to say to Jihyun these days. His friend is more of the heart between them, more of the open veins. Jihyun would paint a canvas with his blood if it made people feel something. His art was always a small piece of his soul that he would never get back.

Jumin didn’t think it was smart, but it made him happy. He supposes there are some things worth losing to some people. “You should have called the office.” His voice is surgical. Callous, vowels sliced with a scalpel, sentence stitched back together haphazardly.

Jihyun laughs. “I did. They said you called out sick. You haven’t been sick since we were kids.”

The memory rises to his mind unbidden. Him in his childhood home, feigning sick from his own emotions. His _hormones_ twisting in his gut torturously. Ha-nui, that angelic girl. Untouchable and beautiful, her smile the same as looking at a beautiful sunrise.

His stomach aches. Jihyun is his best friend and he knows Jumin better than he knows himself; he’s always careful to remember this. It’s why he resigns himself to the garden in the first place.

“You like her.” His voice is void of any accusations and it makes Jumin angry. He shouldn’t be able to be rational about this.

Jumin coughs. “Of course I like her. You have good taste, as you always have. You’re the artist.” The heart between them, while Jumin is the brain. He is the suits and the sensibility and the crushing realism. He is the stone cold facts.

“You like Rika.” This time, when Jihyun says it, his voice presses on all the right syllables. Jumin knows that he knows how he feels. Sick to his stomach and full of a fever. Suddenly the book between them is more than just a book, but it’s her.

Untouchable and beautiful, her smile the same as looking at a beautiful sunrise.

“I never thought you’d have those feelings, Jumin.” He reaches to touch his friend’s shoulder but Jumin stands, takes a few unsteady steps into the garden. He kicks at the wine bottle and it rolls a few inches, hollow and empty.

He lets his thoughts settle on Rika while he tries to find a name for his feelings. “It’s nothing, V. Just…curiosity.” Yes, and a bit of anxiety. A small amount of wonder, child-like and innocent. Jumin wants to trust her deeply and it terrifies him the way children are terrified of the dark. Unknown and full of terrors. He methodically pushes his feelings into the already tangled conglomerate of neglected feelings.

“You could have told me.”

“What is there to tell you?” Jumin’s gaze is focused on a cluster of asters springing up in the garden, their star petals stretching towards the sun. “You two promised yourselves to each other. It is a joyous occasion and doesn’t need any further complication. Feelings have always been unnecessary complications for me.”

His back is turned to his friend but he can hear him get to his feet when he too nudges the wine bottle along the grass. His steps are muted by the grass but suddenly he’s at his side, staring at him with those clear eyes. They know too much, and Jumin hates it.  

Something sharp presses into his forearm and Jumin looks only to see Jihyun pressing the book against him, a faint smile playing at his pale mouth. The spine of the book catches his attention for a moment and he takes it from his friend, tucking it against his chest.

“You’re not a complication, Jumin.” Jihyun’s voice is strong; he might even dare say it’s loud for the first time he’s ever heard it in his life. It shocks him enough to turn his shadowy gaze to his friend, who fingers tremble at his side. “You’re important to us—to me. So, if you need to be around her, if you need to—to figure things out, then I understand.”

Jumin doesn’t think he’s hearing Jihyun correctly, but he doesn’t press the matter any further. He already feels exhausted from the mere acknowledgement of his feelings, and just wants to be left alone with another bottle of wine, another set of beautiful flowers to keep watch over him.

His heart clenches for a moment and he presses his hand there reflexively. “How useless is that.”

…

_And I remember that one single moment, when someone held me up. It was an old man with deep wrinkles. I knew this would happen one day. Everyone at that store would have thought the same. We are all destined to be held up by hands we’ve never seen and be theirs._

…

Han Jumin doesn’t take sick days from work and yet this is where he’s been lately—on his fifth day of being absent from the office, swallowing down the burn of bile and trying to crawl into his own bed.

His week plagues him with images of his best friend in startling flashes, but in all of them he is unreal. He no longer exists, is no longer alive. There is no heart between them, because the artist is dead and the world is a little less beautiful without him in it. The bile rises again and Jumin chokes it back down furiously.

Those tangled threads have all been unraveled, now. The other members of the RFA are on a rotary of trying to reach him. Jaehee calls him in the morning before she heads into the office, leaving a wind’s breeze of messages in anticipation of meeting him by the elevator and briefing him on the latest reports. Around lunch time, Luciel calls him with a series of purrs and noises and get well soon mantras. Zen calls him the least of all, but leaves long voice memos about dealing with his feelings, about mourning.

Jumin deletes all of the messages after listening to them, except for the ones from Yoosung. His voice is tired and strained on each call, which he hazards take place at some time after two o’clock in the morning. The youngest member is always quiet in each message, but he is the only one who doesn’t ask Jumin to do anything. He simply talks to him about the complexity of his feelings towards Jihyun—V—and how complicated things have been.

He thinks Yoosung has his own tangled threads now, and the similarities he feels keep him connected to Jihyun. He doesn’t think he will ever be able to fully talk about how he feels, about his friendship with Jihyun and his feelings for Rika and the way his heart is almost irrevocably broken. He doesn’t think he will ever be able to forgive Jihyun or Rika for taking their own lives in different ways.

Especially Jihyun. Somehow, he knows Jihyun would do things over the same way if he had the opportunity. He is the brains and Jihyun is the red, bleeding heart. And he loves Rika, not with the same child-like wonder that Jumin always offered her, but with that bloody heart of his.

Jumin takes his book to bed with him and reads softly to himself, his mind whirling. Jihyun had to have known what he was doing before it all happened and that makes Jumin’s chest burn with some unrecognizable feeling. He thinks about the dolls in the book and it strikes a chord with him.

He had to have known he was going to leave Jumin in this world alone. Fragile like a doll, Jumin pictures Jihyun as a doll in Rika’s hands, destined to belong to her. He can’t help but think that if he is the doll in her hands, then in his own hands is Jumin. He can’t help but think that Jihyun lifted him up and called him his. He had to have known that he could survive somehow.

So, Jumin promises himself that he’ll try to survive tomorrow. He’ll call the office on his way out of the front door and go back to work, because Jihyun had to have known what he was doing before he left this earth.

 Jihyun is his best friend and he knows Jumin better than he knows himself; he’s always careful to remember this.

**Author's Note:**

> i always wanted to explore jumin's feelings towards rika, especially since there are heavy implications that he has more than an emotional attachment to her. even though i feel like he's mostly aro, that sometimes he feels _something_ towards her and that it's part of what makes him the way he is now. somehow, it has an undertone of feelings between jumin and v. i don't know, jumin's feelings towards everyone are complicated.


End file.
